Brilliant Idiot Chapter 1
by Brilliant Idiot
Summary: It's bad enough he's dead, but how far does he have to wander through the afterlife to simply sit for a nice, quiet cup of tea?


This is the book version of the audio play that I have up on the internet. The audio play is a lot of fun – so if you have any kids in the early teen group, they might like to check out (It's non-commercial and fat free.) 

Chapter One – God's First and Biggest Mistake 

Gene opened his eyes. To say he was surprised at what he saw would be an understatement. What he saw was impossible. Or, at the very least, highly improbable. More precisely, the mere fact that he saw surprised him to no end. It would be safe to say that he had assumed it would be difficult to take in _any_ view clearly when you were dead.

It was only of secondary amazement that what he saw was a sun. A cartoon sun. A cartoon sun smiling down at him from a pink sky. Below the sun, trees swayed cheerfully. They waived their branches in greeting to him, synchronised by a cheering tune. At their feet, penguins chimed in...

"Smile and forget your worries. What right do you have to worry. There's nothing to care about here. So put your cares away and say... Smile... though your heart is breaking..."

Gene slammed his eyes shut. The tuned stopped.

"Perhaps," he mused, "I'm lying on the beach at the West Edmonton Mall..." But the possibility was too horrible to contemplate. He swiftly chased it out of his mind. "Maybe it's a Thursday. ... I never could get the hang of Thursdays..."

He mulled over his choices. He could open his eyes again. ... He did so. ... The mind numbing melody sprang back into full regale. ... He slammed his eyes shut. Or, he could attempt to will himself into oblivion.

The appeal of this second option was beginning to take hold of him. Indeed, he was beginning to experiment with seeing if it was possible, when a voice echoed overhead. It was a woman's voice. It was electronically assisted. It reverberated. The echo implied an impossibly vast space across which she addressed him.

"Welcome to the afterlife."

'Dear god!' He groaned inwardly. 'It's that woman announcer from the Toronto airport. I've gone to hell.'

"Don't worry," she assured him, in the most unassuring tones. "You're perfectly safe." Obviously this was some definition of safe he'd previously been unaware of.

Gene kept his eyes shut.

This allowed him to concentrate on the insanity beginning within. He was starting to feel ... flooopy ... as if his body was waving up and down, forming crest and valleys in a vast ocean, as if his left leg was long and thin and being drawn into a swirling vortex. He felt as if his head was puffing up like a blowfish, with a steady, rhythmic flooping sound pounding in his brain.

The flooping noise was getting louder. Closer. It was coming from outside his brain. It was getting nearer. He took the chance. He peeked.

The peek turned into a full length stare. Then puzzlement. Gene turned his head just as a salmon flopped to a halt beside his ear. A half grown salmon. Its gaping mouth opened and closed, mawing repeatedly, gasping for air. Not gasping for air – making a garbling noise. It was saying something. The Salmon flopped closer.

Gene leaped to his feet, swatting at his ear, dancing around the salmon, trying to find his footing and trying to run, trying to run like hell.

"There's no point in running off," the Salmon said.

Gene stopped and stared. "What?"

"Where would you run to?"

Gene looked around, and regretted it immediately. "You're right." The sun was still smiling down at him. The sky had transformed to a cheerful shade of golden fur. Clouds now dotted the heavens. They looked liked small Volkswagons. The only familiar point of reference was a jet trail, bisecting the sky, a jet trail made of fish scales.

Fish scales... Gene sharply shifted his attention to his feet. The salmon was inescapably still there. "Who the heck are _you_?"

"I'm your own personal, common variety, doubtful salmon. Fresh, not frozen, not wild, but cultivated. ..." he bragged, "but then, you should know."

"You don't _look_ like a salmon. You're missing your fins and half your scales and you've got one eye sealed shut!"

"Well, who's fault is that?! You're not looking so good yourself right now!"

"I'm not _feeling_ so great. I've had a really bad day, waking up _dead_ and everything and I've got this headache, and I don't want to go to heaven with a headache!"

"Who said this was heaven?"

Gene stopped dead in his tracks. He studied the salmon carefully from beneath a half raised eye brow. Slowly, he ventured... "Where am I?" .

"We'll figure _that_ out soon enough." The Salmon started flopping across the meadow, prompting Gene forward. "In the meantime, you're safe."

"So I've been given to understand."

"Well, you _are_ perfectly safe. But, of course, you have been all along."

"Fine for _her_ to say," Gene was thinking. Then he realized that he was not thinking, he had actually said that out loud. Then he realized that he managed to say that without moving his lips. Then he realized he had not said anything at all but that someone _else_ had actually said that.

"Who said that?!"

"We did." A squeaky chorus issued from the vicinity of his feet. "A fat lot _she_ knows."

Gene lifted his shoe. He examined the sole.

"Well! _Finally_" "_Thank you_ very much!" This high pitched sarcasm rose up from somewhere in the shadow of his foot. Gene studied the ground. He put his foot down and lifted the other.

"Oh, geeze!" came a muffled yelp.

"Give us a _break!_"

"Where the heck _are_ you?" Gene stamped one foot down, now frantically lifting the other foot.

"Ayeeeeeiiiii!" "Watch what you're _doing_!" "How would you like it if we stomped all over _you_!"

Gene gawked at the grass beneath his feet.

"Move it, Buster!"

He scuttled aside, only to be subject to a fresh chorus of squeals and squeaks.

He froze in his tracks. "What do you expect me to do?" he pleaded, searching the ground beneath him.

"Lift your feet!"

"Keep off the grass!"

Desperately, Gene lifted one foot, then the other, then hopped on tip toe, frantically searching for a bare patch of lawn. The salmon flooped along side him, nudging him forward. "Don't mind them. They're probably working off a debt from some previous existence. No doubt former lawn fertilizer marketing executives."

Gene pirouetted across the meadow, in the salmon's wake.

Outraged squeals gave chase. "And _she_ calls this _safe_..." "This is obviously some definition of heaven _we'd_ previously been unaware of!"

"So," Gene puffed, once he could here himself speak. "Is this purgatory?"

"No."

"Heaven?"

That resulted in stoic silence from the salmon. It seemed interminable.

"... We ought to have a talk...."

"My god!" It dawned on Gene with a sickening realization. "I _am_ at the West Edmonton Mall..."


End file.
